3D Space Ship

In todays session we created a 3D space craft. This was interesting as I found creating something like this space craft was easier to do. Issaac actually gave a good reason as why I found it easier, based on the fact that space craft are built from imagination unlike cars which are built a certain way, we would find because there is no real design for space craft that it's easier to let out imagination go wild, because there is no doubt we have it wrong.

I am personally proud of this one and it is by far my best creation in 3DS Max in my opinion. I will have to play around with this more and get a better grip on the program, but I do think everything is coming to me quite well.

Concept Artwork

This section of my blog is going to hold a compilation of my concept artwork that I have done throughout the two years that I will be spending in college. It will showcase all my designs and I will explain each one and point out each segment and explain what was the hardest part of such to accomplish.

Trian the Elven Druid

 

Quite a charactristic name that I have given to this particular character. There is no story behind this concept, so I will just explain how I did it. Creating the general overview and effect of this selected piece was done by trial and error. I spent one hour on this character and alot of changes took place. Even a gender change! I particularly like the hair on this concept and the neck outlines itself rather better than I first thought it would. 

Some parts of this drawing when wrong, such as the wonky left eye and the fact his right eye seems to be shut. Intially that eye was open and feeling the breeze, but I miscalculated the eye level and it looked far to bad to leave it open. A quick bit of DIY patch up and it seem to come out well. 

To get the kind of cell shading effect I did, I simply added a cutout filter in photoshop to get the desired effect. The cutout filter is something that I highly reccomend using as it proves to create a more raw concept look and feel to the image. 

Tools: Adobe Photoshop CS3, Graphics Tablet, Patients.

3D Name

In todays 3DS Max class, we learnt how to write our name in 3D and apply a variety of textures to it. It was a simple precedure and consisted of but a few steps. I will explain them below on how to get started creating your name in 3DS Max. Before that I give an example on the 3DS Max name I created..

As you can see from this model, I had added a texture that gives it a ink and cartoon effect. This is a preset built already into 3DS max, called Ink I believe. It gave me the texture that I think worked very well with this kind of 3d model. In a sense it provides a 2D feel to a 3D object.

 

This is my second texture. It holds a rather metallic look to the design. I think this is pretty nice as the light seems to glow of the surface area of the 3d faces. 

Steps to making your name in Max: 

1) Open Max and click on the Shapes option next to your standard primitives. Make sure that the drop down menu is set to splines. You can then, go and select Text from the option box. If you don't know what a Spline is, it is basically a 2d model inside of a 3d enviroment. 

2) After you have drawn down your text change the text in the text box to the bottom right to your name or any other text that you want. From that area you can change the font type and even set the kerning type of the object and space the letters further apart from each other. This is useful for when you need to turn the letters into 3d later to make sure the 3d faces don't conflict with each other and make it look a huge mess.

3) Now you need to turn the text into a editable mesh. This is done by right clicking and coverting to editable mesh. What this does is create polygons on your text objects so you can make it 3d. Once you have done this you simply, highlight all the polygons and extrude the object to make it 3d. 

4) Now you have your 3d text play around with materials (M) and diffuse, and gloss your colours. Add some lighting to you final render and make your name all pretty.

The video below is my animated text that made go around around using basic animation techniques in 3DS max.  

Desktop Project - Final Design

The following image is my final desktop design. It differs some what from my orginal design as it was supposed to be a hand with a blue pulsing aura around it. As of such I decided during creation to go for a more floral and abstract design which I think worked well. It shows a more calm side of media and offers a different appearance to the overall feel and ambience of the design.

My original design which was on paper was as follows:

As you can see from this design the ideal changed quite dramatically. While I kept the overall hand idea I did change the second aspect from a futuristic, mystical design to a more floral and calm design. I think the new design works very well and I am happy with the outcome. Compared to the original, it seems to have kept some aspects, but the outer layers are totally redefined even the background colour and general theme changed. Although if I am honest it kept the mystical element some what.

Peer Group Review 

During our group review we took a look around everyone's desktop design and and review and gave pointers on where it can be improved. As we came to mine, the group generally liked the design, quoting 'It is original'. The only thing they said I could improve on was to add 3 more points and to make it easy to read. Upping the opacity and maybe making them black so they stand out more within the area.

My own critical opinion would be that I haven't left much room for the desktop icons and chances are that they will be hard to read and understand with the contrast of this desktop.

Improved Design 

Below is my improved desktop design. You can clearly see here that I have improved the colour and readability of the 6 points, and added 3 extra points as pointed out. I have used keywords to make them as short as possible but large enough to be readable by people with bad eyesight or good. 

Does the end product match your orginal intentions?

In some ways the end product matched the original design in others it hasn't. The main theme has changed from my original design but I have kept the same imagery that I have chosen before. The blue pulsing aura that I decided to use has changed to a more floral design and this has changed from original intentions. 

Is the end product apporpriate for your chosen audience?

I believe that the end product is appropiate for my audience as it holds no threatening or abusive, terms. Also it is a rather peaceful design and doesn't show anything that I would refer to as inappropiate.

Discuss the techincal aspects of your work and highlights the strengths / areas to develop.

The design was created using a series of brushes and font faces. I went for a rather abstract design and if I am honest wasn't that difficult to create. The hand I took a picture of and added some filter effects to it to give a more postery effect. I saturated the overall background to give it a more lucid feel. My strengths lie in my creativity and ability to create an absract piece, as well was knowing what brushes and filter effect to use to get the desired effect.

Discuss the content / style of your work.

I encountered few problems with my overall design outcome. The brushes were all there and I only needed to download one font type. From this experience I have learned news skills in filtering and creating abstract designs and templates, I have developed by ability to use layers and to properly layout my design using the correct tools. I also made use of layers for every seperate piece of art, for easy removal if I need it.

I managed to meet the deadline for my desktop project and didn't have any problems with keeping the time that we was alloted.

If I had the chance to make this desktop image again I would change the filtering used on the hand, and also the selection of brushes that I used. I would also change the floral theme and make it more darker and sinister to go with a more opposite design theme. 

Desktop Project - Font Choices

As a part of my desktop design projectm I was required to compile and select a group of fonts. I choose many different fonts that believed filled the role well. I choose many Script based font faces and a couple Sci-Fi/Game based font types. I am going to address and dicuss the final three choices that I believed will work well with my font face. I will then discuss the final choice and why compared to the others that I choose that font type.

Neutronium

This font type is particular interesting due to its both hybrid

ability to look a little scripture and at the same time game orientated. By

game orientated I am referring to how it makes itself appear rather

modern and futuristic. The advantages of this type of font is the ability for it

to be textured and effects applied to it in Photoshop. This particular font type gets a rating for 4.2 out of 5.

DeLarge

This font reminds be particularly of games. Especially the old arcade type games.

This font fits in well with the digital media course/ games development that I am taking and would

probably work well in the media rooms.

Although it is rather easy to read it still has a rather blocky element to it. It is not particularly fitting to my design and because of this, I will give it a rating of 3.2 out of 5.

Sloe Gin Rickey

This font reminds me a lot of the old harley davidson motorbikes. The reason I choose this font is because of the uniqueness and interesting boldness it implies.

Although it would fit in even less with my design as the DeLarge it was still the

most readable one there and shows a much better flow than the one above.

Because of this I will rate this design at 4 out of 5.

The Winning Font:

The Winning Font face is going to be Neutronium. It provides the elegance but at

the same time the game orientation which is incredibly useful to my design. I will be using this design

over the others because of this facet.

What this font has compared to the others is a nice readable font, aswell as ease of editing

within Photoshop. It also has a more elegant feel than the other ones and while DeLarge has a more

game interfacem Neutronium has a more sci-fi and less over the edge game appearance.

3D Car

In todays 3d lesson we created a 3d car using box modelling techniques. Again most of the general techniques I knew and are comfortable with, but I did learn alot more on texturing and a little something I wasn't aware of before hand. I found that the skills I learned will help me in the future to create my own 3d game "Dark Age" although I do believe I need alot more work with my modelling and of course take a lot more time when creating my models.

Unity Engine Work - Tavern Interior

Over the past weekend I have found a keen interest in the inner workins of the Unity 3D engine. It has allowed me to create my own games by simply importing my own 3d scenes and models from 3d studio max. I will discuss more on the engine in an other post. But for this one I would like to address one of the issues I faced when designing my game named "Dark Age". I wanted to create a tavern interior. Not with my somewhat limited knowledge of 3d I thought I could simply delete a few polys and allow people to walk inside. No, I found when I did this I could see through the model, plus it didnt allow easier interior editing. Plus the fact when I added the mesh collider (This is to create a sort of force field to stop players running through models) it would not allow me to enter through the gap as this was apart of the mesh even though the polygons were not present. To counter this issue, I created the interior the same way I did the castle in previous 3d lessons. I made four walls. This allowed not only easy interior design and seperate wall designs (Which was useful for the beams and windows) but also allowed me to add a mesh collider and not worry about the problem of not being able to enter interiors.

Above is a base design of my tavern. Here you can see I have added a few textures to the interior design. This is not finished by far and will obviously take a while to finish up but I hope this shows what I plan to do. The floor and ceiling textures will be replaced but for the purpose of presentation I wanted to allow people to see how it is done. In the future I will show this tavern perhaps with more placeables added in such as bar and tables which I will also create in 3d studio max.